Last Hubble Mission Approaching
Hubble will be retrieved from its orbit by the Shuttle’s robotic arm and placed in the payload bay for servicing.
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“The repair of STIS, and of ACS in particular, involves techniques that the astronauts have never done before on Hubble, possibly never before anywhere,” explained Dr. Dave Leckrone, Senior Project Scientist for Hubble Space Telescope. “That is, to open up an instrument that was not designed to be opened up and actually pull out electronic printed circuit boards and replace them with new boards.”
Chosen for the final mission to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are seven astronauts:
• Veteran astronaut Scott D. Altman—commander, also commanded the 2002 Hubble Mission
• Navy Reserve Captain Gregory C. Johnson – pilot
• Mission Specialists
o Veteran spacewalker John M. Grunsfeld
o Veteran spacewalker Michael J. Massimino
o First-time space flier Andrew J. Feustel
o First-time space flier Michael T. Good
o First –time space flier K. Megan McArthur
Performing later on this year what will be considered “on-orbit surgery” by NASA, two science instruments aboard the Hubble will be the focus. Neither instrument was ever designed to be fixed in space, attempting to repair in orbit will make history of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectograph (STIS) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) which are still in place in the Hubble.
NASA reports that neither of the science instruments contains “astronaut-friendly features”, with specially designed tools, crew aids, and procedures required from the Hubble engineers and astronauts for the repair situation. With the 11-day Hubble mission including five spacewalks containing more than the attempted repair of STIS and ACS, it will also install the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Cosmic Origins Spectograph (COS), replace a fine guidance sensor, all six batteries, and all six of the telescope’s gyroscopes, add new thermal coverings, and install a soft capture mechanism on Hubble’s aft bulkhead.
“This is the granddaddy of everything we’ve learned over 25 years, and we’re putting it all together into one great mission,” explained Frank Cepollina, Deputy Associate Director of the Hubble Space Telescope Development Project. So far, training is on schedule for the astronauts and their equipment with May 1, 2008 being their fourth intensive crew familiarization at Goddard, working with the Hubble team for the servicing of Mission 4—considered the heaviest servicing mission ever, carrying 22,000 pounds of hardware onboard.
According to Preston Burch, Associate Director of the Astrophysics Projects Division and Program Manager for the Hubble Space telescope, “It will be carrying approximately 22,000 pounds of hardware onboard. We’ll be using four carriers inside the Shuttle cargo bay to carry all the new science instruments, replacement hardware, tools for the astronauts, and to attach Hubble to the Shuttle while the astronauts are working on it.”
This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
